Pyrotechnic devices play an increasingly important role in aerospace vehicles and systems such as rockets, aircraft, and spacecraft. As an example, the number of pyrotechnic devices used on a typical missile has increased over the years from less than ten to as many as two hundred or more. The additional pyrotechnic devices can be used for several purposes. For example, multiple lower-powered initiators can be used in place of a single higher-powered initiator to provide flexibility in the amount of force that can be generated at a single location on the vehicle. However, the use of additional pyrotechnic devices carries with it the burden of additional infrastructure within the vehicle or system using these devices. As the number of pyrotechnic devices in a vehicle or system increases, several other things increase as well, such as cabling length, cable quantity, weight, number of parts, power usage, system complexity, manufacturing time and system cost. In an environment such as a rocket or missile, weight and volume are at a premium, and an increase in pyrotechnic system weight and volume presents packaging and weight management problems which can require significant engineering time to solve.
Some approaches have been developed to address these challenges with deploying a large number of pyrotechnic devices in a vehicle or system. FIG. 1 illustrates an approach using a bus controller 102, a cable network 103, and devices 104. In this deployment, the devices 104 share the cable network 103 in order to communicate with the bus controller 102. The bus controller 102 can use the cable network 103 to control the device 104, such as the firing of a pyrotechnic device provided as part of one of the pyrotechnic devices 104. Using such a deployment, the infrastructure needed to support the numerous devices can be reduced.